RuPaul’s Drag Race It continues to expand.
MTV and Paramount+ announced Monday that they have greenlit additional seasons of the main original spin-off RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars And Not pierced. The news comes on the heels of the franchise’s nine Emmy nominations, the most of any reality competition series this year. next season of drag race The fair will celebrate the sixteenth.
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After initially bowing out on Logo in 2009, drag race Since then, it has also expanded globally with local editions in the UK, Canada and Australia, featuring local “queens” and runway challenges. The US version has done stints on several cable networks in what is now the Paramount ecosystem, going from LGBTQ+ channel Logo to VH1 to MTV, in addition to airing on Paramount+.
The franchise has been in activism, too, as drag artists and the larger LGBTQ+ community have increasingly faced backlash and censorship. In fact, the show’s production company, World of Wonder, created the first-ever Daredevil Defense Fund with a donation from MTV and drag race. 501C3, which supports the ACLU’s work to advocate for and ensure LGBTQ+ rights, has already raised more than $1.5 million. (For their artistry and activism, World of Wonder founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey THR’s Impact Award at the Banff Global Media Festival in June.)
“Drag queens are television marines. They speak television fluently. They dance, sing, lip sync, put on makeup, and do hair.” Bailey said THR earlier this spring, Before admitting that despite worldwide ratings success, it wasn’t easy to get executives to sign up for domestic releases. Barbato added, “Our whole business is based on a no. We only had one show that was green lit in the room, and the next day that person called us again and said he had changed his mind.”
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